Family Photos Outfit Inspo

November 3, 2018

It’s that time of year again, where every mama out there is frantically trying to find everyone in the family an outfit that coordinates with the rest for family photos. I’ve been telling myself 3x a week for the last three weeks that I HAD to decide what we were wearing for our pictures which are next week! I decided them yesterday.. 🤷🏻‍♀️

I wanted to do a super fancy/formal look for last year’s pictures since it was our first holiday pictures as a family of 3. I found the prettiest sequin ombre dress, and dressed Harlie in bright red, and Justin in all black. I absolutely LOVED how they turned out. They are by far some of my favorites pictures we’ve ever had. So for this year, I’m going with a much more casual – jeans kinda look. I literally threw Harlie in the car yesterday morning to take her to this new indoor playground at the Mall of Georgia I saw for the first time a couple weeks ago, and to take back one item to Francesca’s. As we were walking into the store, I saw the girl that worked there moving a mannequin with this pancho on it and asked if I could see it. I threw it on over my camo tee, and KNEW that was it. That was going to be my outfit piece for our pictures. It has the mustard yellow hues in it that matches this lace dress I picked up a few weeks ago for Harlie from Target. Since Justin is by far the easiest to dress, I knew my freaking out over our outfits I had put off til the last minute was done! Whew! It seriously couldn’t have worked out any better lol.

We all have this “look” we’re trying to go for in our pictures each year, but coordinating everyone can definitely be a challenge. So today I’m sharing tips & outfit inspo to help any of you that are still searching for clothes or just don’t even know where to begin. One of the easiest ways you can put together these outfits is to lay them out on the floor like I did. This way you can see if anything clashes or not. And if you want to add a belt, scarf, etc somewhere.

1. COORDINATE, NOT MATCH. Long gone are the days of everyone in the family in a white tee and blue jeans. Start with a color you feel great in, and find 3-4 colors that compliment that color and start searching for everyone else in those shades. For example, burgundy. I think all the fall vibes when I think/see burgundy. So coordinating tones would be colors of the leaves- mustard, rust, olive green, and even navy.

2. DECIDE IF/WHERE YOU WILL HANG THESE PHOTOS IN YOUR HOME. I made this mistake last summer. I went ahead and ordered a huge 20×30 canvas of our summer/Harlie 6 month’s photos to hang in between two of our wedding pictures. We were in bright colors, and the photos were shot by 2 different photographers. So the editing and scenery were way off.. even Justin (who never says anything about home decor) said it didn’t look good. So off went that canvas to the storage, where it’s been since. So make sure you’ve got somewhere in mind you want to hang these up at, and if it fits the color scheme of that room/area.

3. LIMIT PATTERNS. This one is big. You can’t have mom in floral, dad in gingham, and baby in leopard print. Even if the color scheme works, the patterns will clase so hard in the photos. ONE person can wear a pattern. For us, it was me. You can still do textures, like I have for Harlie the lace on her dress.

4. AVOID ALL WHITE OR BLACK. Some of you may be wanting to do formal, and typically with formal, comes black. But throw in some sequin, or printed tie. You will wash yourselves out, and blend in if all of you are monotone.

5. NO CHARACTERS OR FACES ON CLOTHING. We all know every little girl is obsessed with Moana and Elsa. But lets face it, they look horrible in family photos. Just don’t.

6. THINK ABOUT YOUR BACKGROUND. As with the rest of my procrastinating this year, I have yet to tell my photographer where we want to do our pictures. However, I do know I want it to be in a field type setting, or some type of rustic building, etc. So I know that the colors I’ve chosen to wear will match regardless of which background I choose. You don’t want to be in any type of green if it’s going to be in a grass field for example.

I think that pretty much sums up the “rules” you can call it that I go by. I hope that helps you ladies. Also, there is only 53 days left until Christmas….WHAT!? How is this even possible. I wanted to actually get a jump this year, and went ahead and started shopping. I found THIS roller coaster for Harlie and I am going to have the hardest time not opening this sucker until Christmas! She’s gonna have a blast on it, I can’t wait.

Have you already took your family photos? If so, did you go casual, semi-casual, or formal?!